


at the edge of the world

by ggwynbleidd



Series: Dethentine's [6]
Category: Metalocalypse (Cartoon)
Genre: Dethentine's, Galaktikon Setting, Gift Fic, M/M, everyone has a History yknow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 18:41:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29423229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ggwynbleidd/pseuds/ggwynbleidd
Summary: During the events of Galaktikon, Magnus takes a moment to reflect on how Pickles and Charles alike used to treat him, and how that's changed.For the Dethentine's prompt "OT3."
Relationships: Charles Foster Offdensen/Pickles the Drummer, Magnus Hammersmith/Charles Foster Offdensen, Magnus Hammersmith/Pickles The Drummer
Series: Dethentine's [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2152359
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	at the edge of the world

**Author's Note:**

  * For [glukupikron](https://archiveofourown.org/users/glukupikron/gifts).



Magnus remembered how they both used to greet him, and how they both used to say goodbye.

Pickles had been enthusiastic when he saw him. Bright eyes, that crooked smile, a wave. Flinging arms around his neck. Sometimes a kiss planted on his cheek, a hand trailing down his chest, a sweet hello.

Charles used to give him this...look. Almost feline in its nature - a squint of his eyes, the tiniest turn upwards on the corners of his lips, the tilt of his chin. In private, a hand would grasp for his. He would always ask how he was.

Pickles' goodbyes were short to compensate for the long hellos. A fist thumped against Magnus' chest, or their knuckles bouncing together in a fist bump. Charles would linger. That hand would search for his again, they would find each other in the dark inky nights they secreted away.

The last goodbyes were the hardest to think of, but the easiest to remember.

Narrowed eyes and a sneer, leering behind Nathan like a shadow. Eyes confused and wide, the door to Charles' house slammed in his face.

And those first greetings. The disdain as Pickles crossed his arms over his chest. A robe on against the temperate night air. The shock as Charles saw him stroll into their precious mansion with Toki's arm around his shoulders.

Then, Magnus woke up. So to speak. Pickles avoided him entirely. Charles had explained a few things at a distance. But he still shadowed them as they traveled. As the sky worsened. As the news grew more grim. As Murderface broke off and ran into the snow on a cold, winter night.

Mordhaus felt different now. It hadn't felt right when Magnus first arrived. Too homey, too crowded, too bright and flashy. He had felt uncomfortable and out of place in sheep's skin only Toki could see. Now, he sat in one of the living rooms he had turned into his own room. Because it was, frustratingly, his home now. Through no want of his own.

"Hear anything from them?" he asked as Charles sat down next to him.

He only shook his head in a grim acknowledgment that things were going _wrong._ Magnus had decided to politely ignore most of the fantasy babble that Charles had spouted at him. Prophecy, the way the stars lay, how things were set in stone, the parts that he played and would continue to do so. Old sculptures and tomes and scrolls and paintings high on cave walls of five men, and instruments held in hand, the glowing star behind them. Magnus knew enough to know it wasn't supposed to go like this.

Things were going...badly. Or at least, that’s what he was able to pick up from other people. He wasn’t given information. Why would he? He was just their weird little shadow that puttered around like an annoying ghost, haunting the halls of their home while they were gone.

“It’s been a few weeks,” Magnus said as he took the mug of coffee offered to him.

A small gesture. An appreciated gesture.

“You worried about Pi-”

“Enough, Magnus.”

It was enough. So Magnus quieted and sipped his coffee. Charles lit a cigarette despite his declaration that he had quit smoking years ago. He offered it to Magnus, who took it, and lit another one of his own. It was menthol, and a short, and Magnus wasn’t supposed to be smoking with that new heart and all. But if demons were pouring out of the sky, he could have a cigarette. Even a shitty, minty, short one that he burned through in what felt like a few puffs.

“Question,” Magnus piped up finally, flicking the ash into an ashtray that was suspiciously full of those short menthol cigarettes neither were supposed to have.

“What, Magnus?” Charles heaved a sigh.

“When’d that happen with you and him?” he asked it sincerely. A nosey question. But- “I saw how you guys said goodbye.”

The muscle of Charles’ jaw twitched as he clenched and unclenched it for a second. It drew a vein from under his skin on his temple as he did. Magnus seemed to have genuinely touched a nerve that he felt guilty for. He was just being curious.

And given everyone’s histories.

“A few years,” Charles finally said softly. “We had spent some...time...together. Back in the day. And we just sort of…”

He thread his fingers together.

“...reconnected,” he finished.

“Cute,” Magnus finally said as he snubbed his cigarette. Charles looked at him with a confused blink. “It is. It’s, like, I dunno...sweet?”

Charles continued to look at him in a way that was almost skeptical. Eyebrow raised. Confused. Looking over his glasses with a judgemental eye.

“Didn’t take you to be the sentimental type,” he finally mumbled.

“You know I am,” Magnus’ voice was more of a snap than he intended.

That quieted the conversation. Put a damper on it. Magnus continued to sip his coffee in sullen silence, and it took a few more sips for him to truly understand what the coffee _was_. Beige with cream, sweet with sugar, some kind of vanilla. Because somehow, after years and years, Charles had remembered how Magnus took his coffee.

The door opened to the living room, their heads lifted at the sound and stared at a klokateer in the doorway.

“They’re back, sire.”

Charles was up and out of the room faster than Magnus could even really process it, the latter struggling as he stood up and followed after Charles. Charles was at a light jog through the halls of the sprawling mansion - halls that Magnus still got lost in - and Magnus blinked defensively as the front doors were slung open, pouring in grey sunlight.

There were five figures in the courtyard. The fountain was frozen in the cold. Snow had turned to slush and melted, barely removed from the walkways, Magnus carefully stepping down icy steps as he watched Charles bolt forward.

He was never greeted like this by either of them.

And something about that ate at his insides as he watched Charles’ arms fling around Pickles’ neck, how Pickles’ grabbed his face, how they wrapped themselves in a kiss that lasted too long, the other four filtering into Mordhaus through another entrance, with whispers about a doctor, something Magnus couldn’t place. So it was the three of them. Magnus shivered in the cold, rubbing his hands over his bare forearms as he approached the two of them. The dented metal of Pickles’ armor had a dull shine in the dim sun, he was bruised, he was sweaty but he was Pickles.

Pickles was home.

Pickles and Charles finally parted and Pickles looked up at Magnus. His face betrayed no inner thoughts in that frustrating way that he could disguise his emotions.

“Hey, man,” Magnus said. “Glad that you’re-”

He was cut off with a grunt as a heavy chest plate bumped into his chest, as gauntlets dug into his back, as heavy gloves clung to the back of his shirt. As Pickles hugged him as if he was just as glad to see Magnus as he had been glad to see Charles. With uncertain hands, Magnus wrapped his arms around Pickles and held him close, shivering in the cold.

“Welcome home,” he finally managed. “I’m really glad. That you made it back safe, y’know?”

“I know,” Pickles replied.

They still held onto each other for a moment longer, even as Charles tried to urge them inside. Even as Magnus sniffled a little bit in the cold. Even as Pickles’ face flushed from the wind. But it didn’t matter. Things were going how they should now. Things would get better.


End file.
